Ben Bernanke
Ben Bernanke
Ben Shalom Bernankeis an American economist at the Brookings Institution who served two terms as chairman of the Federal Reserve, the central bank of the United States, from 2006 to 2014. During his tenure as chairman, Bernanke oversaw the Federal Reserve's response to the late-2000s financial crisis. Before becoming Federal Reserve chairman, Bernanke was a tenured professor at Princeton University and chaired the department of economics there from 1996 to September 2002, when he went on public service leave...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPolitician
Date of Birth13 December 1953
CityAugusta, GA
CountryUnited States of America
Clear communication is always important in central banking, but it can be especially important when economic conditions call for further policy stimulus but the policy rate is already at its effective lower bound.
There is a deficit; I'd like to see it lowered. But it's up to Congress to decide whether that should be done by higher taxes, lower spending or some combination.
The prospective increase in the budget deficit will place at risk future living standards of our country. As a result, I think it would be very desirable to take concrete steps to lower the prospective path of the deficit.
The tax code is very inefficient. Both the personal tax code and the corporate tax code. By closing loopholes and lowering rates, you could increase the efficiency of the tax code and create more incentives for people to invest.
Some influential voices of the time argued that by accepting higher inflation, policy-makers could bring about a permanently lower rate of unemployment.
Inflation is up, driven by energy prices. Underlying core rates remain low, which is encouraging.
Inflation is not even a remote risk in the U.S.. Because inflation is so low, monetary policy can afford to be patient to be sure that the recovery is sustained.
Indeed, I would argue that, in situations of considerable slack, growth that is generated solely by increased productivity, and that is unaccompanied by substantial employment growth, may possibly require monetary ease, rather than monetary tightening, in the short run.
Income inequality is troubling because, among other things, it means that many people in our society don't have the opportunities to advance themselves.
In all likelihood, a significant amount of time will be required to restore the nearly eight and a half million jobs that were lost nationwide over 2008 and 2009.
Economic science concerns itself primarily with theoretical and empirical generalizations about the behavior of individuals, institutions, markets, and national economies. Most academic research falls in this category.
Economic management involves the operation of economic frameworks in real time - for example, in the private sector, the management of complex financial institutions or, in the public sector, the day-to-day supervision of those institutions.
The biggest downside of my current job is that I have to wear a suit to work. Wearing uncomfortable clothes on purpose is an example of what former Princeton hockey player and Nobel Prize winner Michael Spence taught economists to call 'signaling.'
Stronger regulation and supervision aimed at problems with underwriting practices and lenders' risk management would have been a more effective and surgical approach to constraining the housing bubble than a general increase in interest rates.